A Handful of Bones
by bethaboo
Summary: A collection of Bones drabbles and short fiction. Rated M to be on the safe side, because you never know what I'll say. Booth/Brennan, Angela/Hodgins, Sweets/Daisy, more to come.
1. The Birthday Present

These are a collection of random Bones drabbles. Blame wtvoc for luring me into the Bones fandom. The pee was irresistible. Originally they were written for the bitesize_bones lj community's Bones Fic Comment Meme.

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**Title:** The Birthday Present

**Characters:** Booth/Brennan

**Rating:** PG

**Word Count:** 394

**Prompt:** Brennan, "I hate my birthday." (thanks to lime_mhc for the prompt)

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"Booth, I hate my birthday. That's why I told you no presents," Brennan says, her voice accusatory with only the barest hints of embarrassment. She is used to being lauded for her professional self; in fact, she expects it. She does not expect be recognized as a person—or as a woman. Lately, it has seemed that Booth is going out of his way to do both and she is unsure, and perhaps even deeply, achingly afraid of what this might mean to the delicate balance of their working friendship.

Booth shrugs, his bruiser's shoulders hunched over under the perfection of his black suit jacket. He looks, Brennan thinks, almost ashamed. As if he broke the rules willingly and with a very real idea of the consequences of doing so.

"Just open it."

She does so, carefully and neatly slitting the newspaper that he has used to wrap the package, before folding it neatly on her desk beside her. The paper disposed of, she turns her attention to the box in front of her. With a heart that is stuttering, she opens the small black box and her intake of breath is sharp and immediate.

The box is empty.

She looks up at Booth almost beseechingly, wanting him to explain—no, _needing _him to explain. Is this a cruel prank? A joke on the woman who is constantly harping on the fact that birthdays are an unnecessary waste of time and energy? She is reminded of the high school boys she went to school with, and something deep within her trembles.

His eyes are dark and full of the normal Booth-like comfort she expects from him, but there is something new. Something . . ._different_. Unsettling. Disquieting.

He bends down, the vaguely spicy scent of his aftershave and the heat and rhythm of his breath overloading her olfactory senses. "Happy birthday, Bones," he murmurs, and she almost feels rather than hears the deep rumble of his voice near her ear.

She can almost see her surprised and wide-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights expression in the glass walls of her office as his lips carefully, purposefully brush her cheek.

He is gone before she can react, before Brennan's abnormally sluggish brain can process the gesture or its inherent meaning. But still, moments later, she wonderingly raises her fingertips to brush the skin of her cheek, and she smiles.


	2. The Lab Coat

Originally for the bitesize_bones lj community's Bones Fic Comment Meme.

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**Title: **The Lab Coat

**Characters: **Booth/Brennan

**Rating: **PG

**Word Count: **388

**Prompt: **Booth/Brennan - labcoat. bonus points for _Booth_ wearing it (thanks to lizcook12 for the prompt)

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"Don't you think this blurs the line a bit? You know, the line between us bad ass FBI agents and the squints?" Booth raises an eyebrow warily at the starched white fabric in his hands, and Brennan knows by the ginger, almost hesitant way that he holds it that he isn't happy. It doesn't matter, she tells herself, trying to bury the sting of defeat and embarrassment and hurt under the many layers of her professional self. It was a silly idea, thinking that Booth could _ever _be a squint—even if it's just a lab coat he could throw over his FBI-standard suit.

"Of course," she says back, and deep down, the formal frigidity in her voice displeases even her. It displeases him too; she can see that in the way the pucker in-between his eyebrows deepens so imperceptibly it would take a forensic anthropologist to notice—or maybe just a woman who has spent far too many unobserved moments cataloging every single physical gesture of this brash, beautiful man. "How foolish of me for thinking that you might be interested in getting your hands dirty."

It is a low blow, even for her, even for the way that his careless rejection of her gift has made her feel. She knows, better than anyone else, how willing he is to get his hands dirty. And not just his hands. He's taken emotional and physical abuse by the truckload for her—and even a bullet. She just wanted to give him something in return, something personal and special, something that nobody else in his life would think to give.

After all, she cannot give herself, so instead, she gives the best part of who she is—a lab coat, embroidered just as hers is, with the insignia of the Jeffersonian, and his title just under the lapel. Only he knows what such a symbol means to her, and still, he rejected it.

Brennan turns away, the trickle of tears beginning to sting the corners of her eyes, and busies herself inspecting a convenient skeleton on the examining table next to her. She misses the way Booth's hand grips the starched cotton of the fabric like it's a lifeline, and it's not just her loss; it's a shared loss, another in a long string of misunderstandings and missed opportunities.


	3. Eggs

Originally written for the bitesize_bones lj community's Bones Fic Comment Meme.

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**Title: **Eggs

**Characters: **Sweets and Daisy

**Rating: **PG

**Word Count: **427

**Prompt: **Strange prompt here, choose any characters you like and somehow apply this Tom Stoppard quote:

"I don't want anyone else but sometimes, surprisingly, there's someone, not the prettiest or the most available, but you know in another life it would be her. Or him, don't you find? A small quickening. The room responds slightly to being entered. Like a raised blind. Nothing intended, and a long way from doing anything, but you catch the glint of being someone else's possibility." (thanks to missnyah for the prompt)

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He knows, with a logic that Dr. Brennan doesn't believe that he could possibly possess, that Daisy is perhaps not the most extraordinary woman in the lab. He knows she doesn't possess the graceful beauty of Angela, the fierce intelligence of Dr. Brennan or even the cool efficiency of Dr. Saroyan. To everyone else, Daisy is lesser—perhaps only by the slightest of margins—but not to him.

Never to him.

Lance knows the truth of what Daisy is, and yet something inside of him still broke apart the first moment he saw her quaint, cute face and those always eager-to-please eyes. Something that further splintered and cracked the first time she called him Lancelot and he felt the springy mass of her hair underneath his chin as he held her. Something he has never felt before in another human being, especially a woman.

Something, he was certain, that had nothing to do with how beautiful she was, or how smart or how efficient. Something, instead, that had everything to do with the sunny, almost batty disposition that made every moment around her an adventure; something about the vulnerable curve of her cheek that told him from the very first moment that she would be intrinsically important to him.

"Lancelot," she sings in that horribly off-tune manner of hers, her hips swaying to the ridiculous British pop music she insists on playing in the mornings, as she scrambles eggs in an old frying pan on her even older stove. The music makes her happy, she tells him, and gives her the energy she needs to face the day. Energy, he knows from personal experience, is Daisy's strong suit. She is relentless and passionate and desperate in her need to be someone, do something—accomplish the goals that she holds in front of her like a beacon.

He knows that it is this same fierce enjoyment of life that baffles everyone else—especially Dr. Brennan. Lance thinks that for someone who deals in death on a daily basis, it must be difficult to understand someone who so relentlessly embraces life and all its varied delights.

The kitchen is small, almost tiny, and he sits in the even tinier nook, waiting for her to finish at the stove. She walks over, bearing a plate of steaming eggs as if she is giving him the world. And maybe, Lance thinks, as he takes in the sunny yellow mound on the plate and her even sunnier smile as she beams at him through a shaft of early morning sunlight, she is.


End file.
